COWDENBEATH boss, Dougie Hill, was proud of the way his injury hit squad emerged with a point from their Lowland League opener with fancied Tranent.

Now after the hard-fought 2-2 draw he is looking for his team to go to Civil Service Strollers this Saturday and collect their first win of the campaign.

The Blues were shocked by losing defender Greg MacPherson in the warm-up with a shoulder injury, and then after 24 minutes seeing striker Jake Sutherland limp-off. 

It went from bad to worse when Tranent nabbed their second goal with a stunning 30 yard strike and the Blues were reduced to 10 men when Paul Mclean saw red.

But they showed their fighting spirit to battle back and were rewarded by an equaliser.

Hill reflected: “We perhaps started the game a little slowly and lost an early goal, but for the last half hour of the first period we were by far the better side, from my point of view.

“Even when we lost that amazing second goal, it did not affect our confidence and we kept at it and created a lot of very good chances. 

"While the red card for Paul was a blow, we just kept going and were rewarded with the penalty to earn the draw.

"I was very proud of the performance shown by the whole team and they were worthy of the point.”

The manager was without a number of players through injury on Saturday, then saw MacPherson and Jake Sutherland added to the list.

And he's now expecting McLean to miss Tuesday night’s SPFL Trophy tie with Kilmarnock B, and perhaps Saturday’s match at CS Strollers, through suspension.

Hill added: “Paul might be OK for the league game next Saturday but Greg will be out.

“Jake suffered a dead leg in the incident which saw him injured, but I would expect him to be fit for this weekend and I will have defender Sean Geyne, who was one of our trialists we had in the pre-season friendlies, signed and ready to play this coming week.

“If we can show the same approach as we saw against Tranent we can get a result.”

Also aboard now is on-loan Motherwell midfielder Olly White, who had a solid game against Tranent, while defender Ethan Kerr missed the match through a niggling injury.